Human Values in Education

Schmidt Number: S-5842

On-line since: 15th May, 2012

LECTURE V

Arnheim, 21st July, 1924.

At
this point of our educational studies I want to interpolate
some remarks referring to the arrangements which were made in
the Waldorf School in order to facilitate and put into practice
those principles about which I have already spoken and shall
have more to say in the coming lectures.

The
Waldorf School in Stuttgart was inaugurated in the year 1919 on
the initiative of Emil Molt,
[Director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory.]
with the purpose of carrying out the
principles of anthroposophical education. This purpose could be
realised through the fact that the direction and leadership of
the school was entrusted to me. Therefore when I describe how
this school is organised it can at the same time serve as an
example for the practical realisation of those fundamental
educational principles which we have been dealing with
here.

I
should like to make clear first of all that the soul of all the
instruction and education in the Waldorf School is the
Teachers' Conference. These conferences are held regularly by
the college of teachers and I attend them whenever I can manage
to be in Stuttgart. They are concerned not only with external
matters of school organisation, with the drawing up of the
timetable, with the formation of classes and so on, but they
deal in a penetrative, far-reaching way with everything on
which the life and soul of the school depends. Things are
arranged in such a way as to further the aim of the school,
that is to say, to base the teaching and education on a
knowledge of man. It means of course that this knowledge must
be applied to every individual child. Time must be devoted to
the observation, the psychological observation of each
child. This is essential and must be reckoned with in actual,
concrete detail when building up the whole educational plan. In
the teachers' conferences the individual child is spoken about
in such a way that the teachers try to grasp the nature of the
human being as such in its special relationship to the child in
question. You can well imagine that we have to deal with all
grades and types of children with their varying childish
talents and qualities of soul. We are confronted with pretty
well every kind of child, from the one whom we must class as
being psychologically and physically very poorly endowed to the
one — and let us hope life will confirm this — who
is gifted to the point of genius.

If
we want to observe children in their real being we must acquire
a psychological faculty of perception. This kind of perception
not only includes a cruder form of observing the capacities of
individual children, but above all the ability to appraise
these capacities rightly. You need only consider the following:
One can have a child in the class who appears to be
extraordinarily gifted in learning to read and write, or seems
to be very gifted in learning arithmetic or languages. But to
hold fast to one's opinion and say: This child is gifted, for
he can learn languages, arithmetic and so on quite easily
— this betokens a psychological superficiality. In
childhood, say at about 7, 8 or 9 years old the ease with which
a child learns can be a sign that later on he will develop
genius; but it can equally well be a sign that sooner or later
he will become neurotic, or in some way turn into a sick man.
When one has gained insight into the human being and knows that
this human being consists not only of the physical body which
is perceptible to the eye, but also bears within him the
etheric body which is the source of growth and the forces of
nourishment, the cause whereby the child grows bigger; when one
considers further that man also has an astral body within him,
the laws of which have nothing whatever to do with what is
being physically established but on the contrary work
destructively on the physical, and destroy it in order to make
room for the spiritual; and furthermore when one considers that
there is still the ego-organisation which is bound up with the
human being, so that one has the three organisations —
etheric body, astral body, ego-organisation and must pay heed
to these as well as to the perceptible physical body —
then one can form an idea of how complicated such a human being
is, and how each of these members of the human being can be the
cause of a talent, or lack of talent in any particular sphere,
or can show a deceptive talent which is transient and
pathological. One must develop insight as to whether the talent
is of such a kind as to have healthy tendencies, or whether it
tends towards the unhealthy.

If
as teacher and educator, one represents with the necessary
love, devotion and selflessness the knowledge of man of which
we have been speaking here in these lectures, then something
very definite ensues. In living together with the children one
becomes — do not misunderstand the word, it is not used
in a bragging sense — one becomes ever wiser and wiser.
One discovers for oneself how to appraise some particular
capacity or achievement of the child. One learns to enter in a
living way into the nature of the child and to do so
comparatively quickly.

I
know that many people will say: If you assert that the human
being, in addition to his physical body, consists of
super-sensible members, etheric body, astral body and
ego-organisation, it follows that only someone who is
clairvoyant and able to perceive these super-sensible members of
human nature can be a teacher. But this is not the case.
Everything perceived through imagination, inspiration and
intuition, as described in my books, can be examined and
assessed by observing the physical organisation of the child,
because it comes to expression everywhere in this physical
organisation.

It
is therefore perfectly possible for a teacher or educator who
carries out his profession in a truly loving way and bases his
teaching on a comprehensive knowledge of man, to speak in the
following way about some special case: Here the physical body
shows signs of hardening, of stiffening, so that the child is
unable to develop the faculties which, spiritually, are
potentially present, because the physical body is a
hindrance. Or, to take another case, it is possible that
someone might say: In this particular child, who is about 7 or
8 years old, certain attributes are making their appearance.
The child surprises us in that he is able to learn this or that
very early; but one can observe that the physical body is too
soft, it has a tendency which later on may cause it to run to
fat. If the physical body is too soft, if, so to say, the fluid
element has an excess of weight in relation to the solid
element, then this particular tendency causes the soul and
spirit to make themselves felt too soon, and then we have a
precocious child. In such a case, during the further
development of the physical body, this precocity is pushed back
again, so that under certain conditions everything may well be
changed and the child become for the whole of life, not only an
average person, but one even below average. In short, we must
reckon with the fact that what external observation reveals in
the child must be estimated rightly by means of inner
perceptiveness, so that actually nothing whatever is said if
one merely speaks about faculties or lack of faculties.

What I am now saying can also be borne out by studying the
biographies of the most varied types of human being. In
following the course of the spiritual development of mankind it
would be possible to cite many a distinguished personality who
in later life achieved great things, but who was regarded as a
child as being almost completely ungifted and at school had
been, so to say, one of the duffers. In this connection one
comes across the most remarkable examples. For instance there
is a poet who at the age of 18, 19 and even 20 was held to be
so ungifted by all those who were concerned with his
education that they advised him, for this very reason,
not to attempt studying at a higher level. He did not, however,
allow himself to be put off, but continued his studies, and it
was not so long afterwards that he was appointed inspector of
the very same schools that it had not been thought advisable
for him to attend as a young man. There was also an Austrian
poet, Robert Hamerling, who studied with the purpose of
becoming a teacher in a secondary school (Gymnasium). In the
examination he obtained excellent marks for Greek and
Latin; on the other hand he did not pass muster for the
teaching of the German language, because his essays were
considered to be quite inadequate. Nevertheless he became a
famous poet! We have found it necessary to separate a number of
children from the others, either more or less permanently or
for a short time, because they are mentally backward and
through their lack of comprehension, through their inability to
understand, they are a cause of disturbance. These children are
put together into a special class for those who are of limited
capacity. This class is led by the man who has spoken to you
here, Dr. Schubert, whose very special qualities make him a
born leader of such a class. This task calls indeed for special
gifts. It needs above all the gift of being able to penetrate
into those qualities of soul which are, as it were, imprisoned
in the physical and have difficulty in freeing themselves.
Little by little they must be liberated. Here we come again to
what borders on physical illness, where the psychologically
abnormal impinges on what is physically out of order. It is
quite possible to shift this borderland, it is in no way rigid
or fixed. Indeed it is certainly helpful if one can look behind
every so-called psychological abnormality and perceive what is
not healthy in the physical organism of the person in question.
For in the true sense of the word there are no mental
illnesses; they are brought about through the fact that the
physical does not release the spiritual.

In
Germany today
[just after the First World War.]
we have also to
reckon with the situation that nearly all school children are
not only undernourished, but have suffered for years from
the effects of under-nourishment. Here therefore we are
concerned with the fact that through observing the
soul-spiritual and the physical-corporeal we can be led to a
comprehension of their essential unity. People find it very
difficult to understand that this is essential in education.
There was an occasion when a man, who otherwise was possessed
of considerable understanding and was directly engaged in
matters pertaining to schools, visited the Waldorf School. I
myself took him around for days on end. He showed great
interest in everything. But after I had told him all I could
about one child or another — for we spoke mostly about
the children, not about abstract educational principles, our
education being based on a knowledge of man — he finally
said: “Well and good, but then all teachers would have to
be doctors.” I replied: “That is not necessary; but
they should certainly have some medical knowledge, as much as a
teacher needs to know for his educational work.”

For
where shall we be if it is said that for some reason or
another, provision cannot be made for it, or the teachers
cannot learn it? Provision simply must be made for what is
required and the teachers must learn what is necessary. This is
the only possible standpoint. The so-called normal capacities
which man develops, which are present in every human being, are
best studied by observing pathological conditions. And if one
has learned to know a sick organism from various points of
view, then the foundation is laid for understanding a soul
endowed with genius. It is not as though I were taking
the standpoint of a Lombroso
[Italian criminologist.]
or someone holding similar views; this is not the case. I do not
assert that genius is always a condition of sickness, but one
does actually learn to know the soul-spiritual in learning to
know the sick body of a child. In studying the difficulties
experienced by soul and spirit in coming to outer manifestation
in a sick body, one can learn to understand how the soul seizes
hold of the organism when it has something special to
express.

So
education comes up against not only slight pathological
conditions, such as are present in children of limited
capacity, but it meets what is pathological in the widest sense
of the word. This is why we have also introduced medical
treatment for the children in our school. We do not, however,
have a doctor who only practises medicine and is quite outside
the sphere of education, but our school doctor, Dr. Kolisko, is
at the same time the teacher of a class. He stands completely
within the school as a teacher, he is acquainted with all the
children and is therefore in a position to know the particular
angle from which may come any pathological symptom appearing in
the child. This is altogether different from what is possible
for the school doctor who visits the school on certain formal
occasions and judges the state of a child's health on what is
necessarily a very cursory observation. Quite apart from this,
however, in the teachers' conferences no hard and fast line is
drawn between the soul-spiritual and physical-corporeal when
considering the case of any particular child. The natural
consequence of this is that the teacher has gradually to
acquire insight into the whole human being, so that he is just
as interested in every detail connected with physical health
and sickness as he is in what is mentally sound or
abnormal.

This is what we try to achieve in the school. Each teacher
should have the deepest interest in, and pay the greatest
attention to the whole human being. It follows from this that
our teachers are not specialists in the ordinary sense of the
word. For in effect the point is not so much whether the
history teacher is more or less master of his subject, but
whether by and large he is the kind of personality who is able
to work upon the children in the way that has been described,
and whether he has an awareness of how the child is developing
under his care.

I
myself was obliged to teach from my 15th year onwards, simply
in order to live. I had to give private lessons and so gained
direct experience in the practice of education and teaching.
For instance, when I was a very young man, only 21, I undertook
the education of a family of four boys. I became resident in
the family, and at that time one of the boys was 11 years old
and he was clearly hydrocephalic. He had most peculiar habits.
He disliked eating at table, and would leave the dining room
and go into the kitchen where there were the bins for refuse
and scraps. There he would eat not only potato peelings but
also all the other mess thrown there. At 11 years old he still
knew practically nothing. An attempt had been made, on the
basis of earlier instruction which he had received, to let him
sit for the entrance examination to a primary school, in the
hope that he could be received into one of the classes. But
when he handed in the results of the examination there was
nothing but an exercise book with one large hole where he had
rubbed something out. He had achieved nothing else whatever and
he was already 11 years old. The parents were distressed. They
belonged to the more cultured upper-middle class, and everybody
said: The boy is abnormal. Naturally when such things are said
about a child people feel a prejudice against him. The general
opinion was that he must learn a trade, for he was capable of
nothing else. I came into the family, but nobody really
understood me when I stated what I was prepared to do. I said:
If I am given complete responsibility for the boy I can promise
nothing except that I will try to draw out of the boy what is
in him. Nobody understood this except the mother, with her
instinctive perception, and the excellent family doctor. It was
the same doctor who later on, together with Dr. Freud, founded
psycho-analysis. When, however, at a later stage it became
decadent, he severed his connection with it. It was
possible to talk with this man and our conversation led
to the decision that I should be entrusted with the boy's
education and training.

In
eighteen months his head had become noticeably smaller and the
boy was now sufficiently advanced to enter a secondary school
(Gymnasium). I accompanied him further during his school career
for he needed extra help, but nevertheless after eighteen
months he was accepted as a pupil in a secondary school. To be
sure, his education had to be carried on in such a way that
there were times when I needed hours in order to prepare what I
wanted the boy to learn in a quarter of an hour. It was
essential to exercise the greatest economy when teaching him
and never to spend more time on whatever it might be than was
absolutely necessary. It was also a question of arranging the
day's timetable with great exactitude: so much time must be
given to music, so much to gymnastics, so much to going for
walks and so on. If this is done, I said to myself, if the boy
is educated in this way, then it will be possible to draw out
of him what is latent within him. Now there were times when
things went quite badly with my efforts in this direction. The
boy became pale. With the exception of his mother and the
family doctor people said with one accord: That fellow is
ruining the boy's health! — To this I replied: Naturally
I cannot continue with his education if there is any
interference. Things must be allowed to go on according to our
agreement. And they went on.

The
boy went through secondary school, continued his studies and
became a doctor. The only reason for his early death was that
when he was called up and served as a doctor during the world
war he caught an infection and died of the effects of the
ensuing illness. But he carried out the duties of his medical
profession in an admirable way. I only bring forward this
example in order to show how necessary it is in education to
see things all round, as a whole. It also shows how under
certain definite educational treatment it is possible in the
long run to reduce week by week a hydrocephalic condition.

Now
you will say: Certainly, something of this kind can happen when
it is a case of private tuition. But it can equally well happen
with comparatively large classes. For anyone who enters
lovingly into what is put forward here as the knowledge of man
will quickly acquire the possibility of observing each
individual child with the attention that is necessary; and this
he will be able to do even in a class where there are many
pupils. It is just here however that the psychological
perception of the kind which I have described is necessary, but
this perception is not so easily acquired if one goes through
the world as a single individual and has absolutely no interest
in other people. I can truly say that I am aware of what I owe
to the fact that I really never found any human being
uninteresting. Even as a child no human being was ever
uninteresting to me. And I know that I should never have been
able to educate that boy if I had not actually found all human
beings interesting.

It
is this width of interest which permeates the teachers'
conferences at the Waldorf School and gives them atmosphere, so
that — if I may so express myself — a psychological
mood prevails throughout and these teachers' conferences then
really become a school based on the study of a deep psychology.
It is interesting to see how from year to year the
“college of teachers” as a whole is able to deepen
its faculty for psychological perception. In addition to
all that I have already described, the following must also be
stated when one comes to consider the individual classes. We do
not go in for statistics in the ordinary sense of the word, but
for us the classes are living beings also, not only the
individual pupils. One can take some particular class and study
it for itself, and it is extraordinarily interesting to observe
what imponderable forces then come to light. When one studies
such a class, and when the teachers of the different classes
discuss in college meeting the special characteristics of each
class, it is interesting for instance to discover that a class
having in it more girls than boys — for ours is a
co-educational school — is a completely different being
from a class where there are more boys than girls; and a class
consisting of an equal number of boys and girls is again a
completely different being. All this is extremely
interesting, not only on account of the talk which takes place
among the children, nor of the little love affairs which always
occur in the higher classes. Here one must acquire the right
kind of observation in order to take notice of it when this is
necessary and otherwise not to see it. Quite apart from this
however is the fact that the imponderable “being”
composed of the different masculine and feminine individuals
gives the class a quite definite spiritual structure. In this
way one learns to know the individuality of the different
classes. And if, as with us in the Waldorf School, there are
parallel classes, it is possible when necessary — it is
very seldom necessary — to make some alteration in the
division of the classes. Studies such as these, in connection
with the classes, form ever and again the content of the
teachers' conferences. Thus the content of these conferences
does not consist only of the administration of the school, but
provides a living continuation of education in the school
itself, so that the teachers are always learning. In this way
the conferences are the soul of the whole school. One
learns to estimate trivialities rightly, to give due weight to
what has real importance, and so on. Then there will not be an
outcry when here or there a child commits some small
misdemeanour; but there will be an awareness when something
happens which might endanger the further development of the
school. So the total picture of our Waldorf School which has
only come about in the course of the years, is an interesting
one. By and large our children, when they reach the higher
classes, are more able to grasp what a child has to learn at
school than those from other schools; on the other hand, as I
have described, in the lower classes they remain somewhat
behind in reading and writing because we use different methods
which are extended over several years. Between the ages of 13
and 15, however, the children begin to outstrip the pupils of
other schools owing, among other things, to a certain ease with
which they are able to enter into things and to a certain
aptness of comprehension.

Now
a great difficulty arises. It is a remarkable fact that where
there is a light, shadows are thrown by objects; where there is
a weak light there are weak shadows, where there is a strong
light there are strong shadows. Likewise in regard to certain
qualities of soul, the following may be observed. If
insufficient care is taken by the teachers to establish contact
with their pupils in every possible way, so that they are
models on which the children base their own behaviour, then,
conversely, as the result of a want of contact it can
easily happen that deviations from moral conduct make their
appearance. About this we must have no illusions whatever. It
is so. This is why so much depends upon a complete
“growing together” of the individualities of the
teachers and the individualities of the pupils, so that the
strong inner attachment felt by the children for the teachers
on the one side may be reciprocally experienced by the teachers
on the other, thus assuring the further development of
both.

These things need to be studied in an inner, human, loving way,
otherwise one will meet with surprises. But the nature of the
method is such that it tends to draw out everything that lies
potentially in the human being. At times this is exemplified in
a somewhat strange fashion. There is a German poet who knew
that he had been badly brought up and badly taught, so that
very many of his innate qualities — he was always
complaining about this — could not come to expression.
This was because his body had already become stiff and
hardened, owing to the fact that in his youth no care had been
taken to develop his individuality. Then one day he went to a
phrenologist. Do not imagine that I am standing up for
phrenology or that I rate it particularly highly; it has
however some significance when practised intuitively. The
phrenologist felt his head and told him all kinds of nice
things, for these were of course to be found; but at one spot
of the skull he stopped suddenly, became red and did not trust
himself to say a word. The poet then said: “Come now,
speak out, that is the predisposition to theft in me. It seems
therefore that if I had been better educated at school this
tendency to theft might have had very serious
consequences.”

If
we wish to educate we must have plenty of elbow room. This
however is not provided for in a school which is run on
ordinary lines according to the dreadful timetable: 8 to 9
religion, 9 to 10 gymnastics, 10 to 11 history, 11 to 12
arithmetic. What comes later blots out what has been given
earlier, and as, in spite of this, one has to get results, a
teacher is well-nigh driven to despair. This is why in the
Waldorf School we have what may be termed teaching
periods. The child comes into a class. Every day during
Main Lesson, which continues for the best part of the morning,
from 8 to 10 or from 8 to 11, with short breaks for recreation,
he is taught one subject. This is given by one teacher,
even in the higher classes. The subject is not changed hour by
hour, but is continued for as long as may be necessary for the
teacher to get through what he wishes to take with the class.
In arithmetic, for instance, such a period might last 4 weeks.
Every day then, from 8 to 10 the subject in question is carried
further and what is given one day is linked on to what was
taught the previous day. No later lesson blots out the one
given earlier; concentration is possible. Then, after about 4
weeks, when the arithmetic period has been taken far enough and
is brought to a conclusion, a history period may follow, and
this again, according to the length of time required, will be
continued for another 4 or 5 weeks. And so it goes on. Our
point of view is the very opposite to what is called the system
of the specialist teacher. You might for instance when visiting
the Waldorf School find our Dr. Baravalle taking a class for
descriptive geometry. The pupils sit facing him with their
drawing boards in front of them. He lets them draw and his
manner is that of the most exemplary specialist teacher of
geometry. Now coming into another school and looking at its
list of professors and teachers you will find appended to one
name or another: Diploma in Geometry or Mathematics or whatever
it may be. I have known very many teachers, specialists in
mathematics for instance, who boasted of the fact that when
they took part in a school outing they were quite unable to
tell the children the names of the plants. — But morning
school is not yet over and here you will see Dr. Baravalle
walking up and down between the desks and giving an English
lesson. And out of the whole manner and method of his teaching
you will see that he is speaking about all kinds of things and
there is no means of knowing in which subject he is a
specialist. Some of you may think geography is his special
subject, or geometry or something else. The essential substance
and content of one's teaching material can undoubtedly be
acquired very quickly if one has the gift of entering right
into the sphere of cognition, of experiencing knowledge within
the soul. So we have no timetable. Naturally there is nothing
pedantic about this. In our Waldorf School the Main Lesson is
given in periods; other lessons must of course be fitted into a
timetable, but these follow on after the Main Lesson.

Then we think it very important that the children should be
taught two foreign languages from the time they first come to
school when they are still quite small. We take French and
English. It must be admitted that in our school this can be a
perfect misery, because so many pupils have joined the school
since its foundation. For instance pupils came to us who should
really be taken into Class 6. In this class however, there are
children who have already made considerable progress in
languages. Now these new children should join them, but they
have to be put into Class 5 simply because they haven't the
foggiest notion of languages. We have continually to reckon
with the difficulties.

Another thing we try to arrange is that whenever possible the
most fundamental lessons are given in the morning, so that
physical training — gymnastics, eurythmy and so on
— is kept for the afternoon. This however is no hard and
fast arrangement, for as we cannot afford an endless number of
teachers not everything can be fitted in as ideally as we would
wish, but only as well as circumstances permit. You will not
misunderstand me if I say that with ideals no beginning
can be made. Do not say that anthroposophy is not idealistic.
We know how to value ideals, but nothing can be begun with
ideals. They can be beautifully described, one can say: This is
how it ought to be. One can even flatter oneself that one is
striving in this direction. But in reality we have to cope with
a quite definite, concrete school made up of 800 children whom
we know and with between 40 and 50 teachers whom we must also
know. But what is the use (you may ask) of a college of
teachers when no member of it corresponds to the ideal? The
essential thing is that we reckon with what is there. Then we
proceed in accordance with reality. If we want to carry out
something practically we must take reality into account. This
then is what I would say in regard to period teaching.

Owing to our free approach to teaching, and this must certainly
be apparent from what I am describing to you, it naturally
comes about that the children do not always sit as still as
mice. But you should see how the whole moral atmosphere and
inner constitution of a class depends on the one who has it in
charge, and here again it is the imponderable that counts. In
this connection I must say that in the Waldorf School there are
also teachers who prove to be inadequate in certain respects. I
will not describe them, but it can well happen that on entering
a class one is aware that it is “out of tune.” A
quarter of the class is lying under the benches, a quarter is
on top of them and the rest are continually running out of the
room and knocking on the door from outside. We must not let
these things baffle us. The situation can be put right again if
one knows how to get on with the children. They should be
allowed to satisfy their urge for movement; one should not fall
back on punishment but set about putting these things right in
another way. We are not at all in favour of issuing commands;
on the contrary with us everything must be allowed to develop
by itself. Through this very fact however there also develops
by itself what I have described as something lying within the
teachers as their life. Certainly the children sometimes make a
frightful noise, but this is only a sign of their vitality.
They can also be very active and lively in doing what they
should, provided the teacher knows how to arouse their
interest. We must of course make use of the good qualities of
the so-called good child, so that he learns something, and with
a rascal we must even make use of his rascally qualities, so
that he too makes progress. We do not get anywhere if we are
only able to develop the good qualities. We must from time to
time develop the so-called rascally qualities, only we must of
course be able to turn them in the right direction. Very often
these so-called rascally qualities are precisely those which
signify strength in the grown-up human being; they are
qualities which, rightly handled, can culminate in what is most
excellent in the grown up man or woman.

And
so ever and again one has to determine whether a child gives
little trouble because he is good, or because he is ill. It is
very easy, if one considers one's own convenience, to be just
as pleased with the sick child who sits still and does not make
himself heard, as with the good child, because he does
not call for much attention. But if one looks with real
penetration into human nature one often finds that one has to
devote much more attention to such a child than to a so-called
rascal. Here too it is a question of psychological insight and
psychological treatment, the latter naturally from the
soul-spiritual point of view.

There is another thing to be considered. In the Waldorf School
practically all the teaching takes place in the school itself.
The burden of homework is lifted, for the children are given
very little to do at home. Because of this, because all the
work is done together with the teachers, the children's
attitude is a quite remarkable one. In the Waldorf School
something very characteristic comes about, as the following
example will show: There was an occasion when certain pupils
had misbehaved. A teacher who was not yet fully permeated
with the Waldorf School education felt it necessary to punish
these children and he did so in an intellectualistic way. He
said: “You must stay in after school and do some
arithmetic.” The children were quite unable to understand
that doing arithmetic could be regarded as a punishment, for
this was something which gave them the greatest pleasure. And
the whole class — this is something which actually
happened — asked: “May we stay in too?” And
this was intended as a punishment! You see, the whole attitude
of mind changes completely, and it should never happen that a
child feels that he is being punished when he has to do
something which he actually does with devotion, with
satisfaction and joy. Our teachers discover all sorts of ways
of getting rid of wrong behaviour. Once it so happened that our
Dr. Stein, who is particularly inventive in this respect,
noticed that during his lesson in a higher class the children
were writing letters and passing them round. Now what did he do
in order to put the matter right? He began to speak about the
postal service, explaining it in some detail and in such a way
that the writing of letters gradually ceased. The description
of the postal service, the history of the origin of
correspondence had apparently nothing to do with the
misdemeanour noticed by the teacher and nevertheless it had
something to do with it. You see, if one does not ask in a
rationalistic way: “What shall I do” but is able to
take advantage of a sudden idea because one knows instinctively
how to deal with any situation in class, the consequences are
often good; for in this way much more can be achieved towards
the correction of the pupils than by resorting to
punishment.

It
must above all be clear to every member of the class that the
teacher himself truly lives in accordance with his precepts. It
must never come about that a choleric boy who makes a mess of
his exercise hooks, seizes his neighbour by the ears and tweaks
his hair, is shouted at by the teacher: “How dare you
lose your temper, how dare you behave in such a way! Boy, if
you ever repeat such a performance I will hurl the inkpot at
your head!” This is certainly radically described, but
something of the kind may well happen if a teacher does not
realise that he himself must be an example in the school of
what he expects of the pupils. What one is has far more
importance than having principles and a lot of knowledge. What
kind of a person one is, that is the point. If a candidate in
the examination for teachers, in which he is supposed to show
that he is well-fitted for his calling, is only tested in what
he knows, — well, what he knows in the examination room
is precisely what later on he will have to look up again in his
text books. But this can be done without the need of sitting
for an examination. But in actual fact no one should enter a
school who has not the individuality of a teacher, in body,
soul and spirit. Because this is so I can say that in carrying
out my task of choosing the teachers comprising the
College of Teachers at the Waldorf School, I certainly do not
regard it as an obstacle if someone has obtained his teacher's
diploma, but in certain respects I look more closely at one who
has passed his examination than at another who through his
purely human attitude shows me that his individuality is
that of a true teacher. It is always a matter of concern when
someone has passed examinations; he can undoubtedly still be an
extremely clever man, but this must be in spite of having
passed examinations.

It
is remarkable how Karma works, for the Waldorf School, which is
intended to stand as a concrete example of this special
education based on the knowledge of man, was actually only
possible in Württemberg, nowhere else, because just at the
time when we were preparing to open the school a very old
school regulation was still in force. If at that time people
had been taken hold of by the enlightened ideas which later
came forth from the constitutional body of the Weimar National
Assembly (Nationalversammlung) with which we have constantly to
contend, because it wishes to demolish our lower classes,
we should never have been able to create the Waldorf School. It
will certainly become ever rarer and rarer for teachers to be
judged according to their human individualities and not
according to their qualifications. It will become even rarer in
the lower classes to be able to do this or that; for the world
works — how can one put it — towards
“freedom” and “human dignity.” This
“human dignity” is however furthered in a strange
manner by the help of the time-table and general arrangement of
lessons. In the capital city of a country there is a Ministry
of Education. In this Ministry it is known what is taught in
each school and class by means of regulations which apportion
exactly how the subjects are to be divided up. The consequence
is that in some out-of-the-way place there is a school. If
information is required as to what exactly is being taught for
instance on 21st July, 1924 at 9.30 a.m. in the 5th class of
this Primary School it has only to be looked up in the
corresponding records of the Ministry and one can say precisely
what is being taught in the school in question. — With
us, on the contrary, you have two parallel classes, 5A and 5B.
You go perhaps into both classes, one after the other and are
astonished to find that in the one parallel class something
completely different is going on from what is happening in the
other. There is no similarity. Classes 5A and 5B are entrusted
entirely to the individuality of the class teacher; each can do
what corresponds to his own individuality, and he does it. In
spite of the fact that in the teachers' conferences there is
absolute agreement on essential matters, there is no obligation
for the one class to be taught in just the same way as the
parallel class; for what we seek to achieve must be achieved in
the most varied ways. It is never a question of external
regulations. So you will find with the little children in Class
1 that a teacher may do something of this kind
[Dr Steiner made movements with his hands.]
in order to help the children to
find their way into drawing with paintbrush and paint: you come
into the class and see the children making all kinds of
movements with their hands which will then be led over to
mastering the use of brush or pencil. Or you come into the
other class and there you see the children dancing around in
order that the same skill may be drawn out of the movement of
the legs. Each teacher does what he deems to be best suited to
the individualities of the children and his own individuality.
In this way life is brought into the class and already forms
the basis of what makes the children feel that they really
belong to their teachers.

Naturally, in spite of that old school regulation, in
Württemberg, too, there is school inspection; but in
regard to this we have come off quite well. The inspectors'
attitude showed the greatest possible insight and they agreed
to everything when they saw how and why it was done. But
such occasions also give rise to quite special happenings. For
example, the inspectors came into a class where the teacher
usually experienced great difficulty in maintaining discipline.
Time and again she had to break into her teaching and not
without considerable trouble re-establish order. Well, the
inspectors from the Ministry came into her class and the
teacher was highly astonished at the perfect behaviour of the
children. They were model pupils, so much so that on the
following day she felt bound to allude to it and said:
“Children, how good you were yesterday!” Thereupon
the whole class exclaimed: “But of course, Fräulein
Doktor, we will never let you down!” Something
quite imponderable develops in the pupils when the teachers try
to put into practice what I have stated at the conclusion of
all these lectures. If children are taught and educated in such
a way that life is livingly carried over into their lives, then
out of such teaching life-forces develop which continue to grow
and prosper.